A Bell's Biography

Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale turns a bell into a living witness to conquest, faith, and memory. Born in a French Catholic chapel near Lake Champlain, it once summoned settlers and Native converts beneath the cross, its voice carrying the hopes of empire as well as the solemnity of worship. But in Puritan New England, the bell becomes a symbol of suspicion and conflict, believed to be part of Jesuit schemes to rally Native allies against English settlers. When rangers raid the chapel, killing the priests and seizing the bell as spoils, their triumph curdles into tragedy. Ambushed in the swamp, they lose Deacon Lawson, who is buried with the bell above him, transforming the stolen emblem into a funeral knell. Years later, laborers recover it from the marsh during another war, and its return stirs deep feelings of ancestry, patriotism, and loss. Sold and given to a meeting-house, it rings first for its benefactor's funeral and then for the surrender of Quebec, binding private grief to public victory. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.